“You’re Going To Have To Earn This”

An Orange Street man was displeased at having the towing company “boot” placed on his Dodge. He took it out on a tow truck—and then two cops.

Police spokesman Officer David Hartman said that happened just past midnight Saturday.

Here’s how Hartman said the incident unfolded:

A man saw a tow-truck driver place the boot—which immobilizes a vehicle prior to towing—on his grey Dodge SUV for unpaid city taxes.

The man didn’t like that. He “ordered [the tow-truck driver] to remove the boot.”

No dice.

So the man “drove the SUV into the tow truck, then over a parking meter and finally into the deli” at Orange and Court streets. He then “fled after crawling out of the damaged SUV’s passenger window.” He left the SUV “wedged between the corner delicatessen and a tree.”

Officers Gene Trotman Jr. (pictured above) and Milton Jackson arrived. The ran the Dodge’s plate. They recognized the names that showed up as the vehicle’s owners. “Officer Trotman,” according to Hartman, “had dealings with the two in the past.”

He and Jackson would have new dealings with them now.

They went to the two registered owners’ home nearby on Orange Street. They encountered one of the two owners outside. She said the other registered owner, the SUV driver who had allegedly caused the mayhem, “was upstairs, asleep.”

She took them to the apartment and opened the door—to encountered the 34-year-old SUV driver proceeded to “swing his fists, hitting both officers as he screamed, ‘You’re going to have earn this.’”

“The officers recovered quickly and [the SUV driver] was handcuffed. As he struggled, [the woman] tried pulling Officer Jackson away from [the suspect]. He yelled for her to back up. She did, and grabbed a fire extinguisher. Officer Jackson took it away from her and put her in handcuffs,” according to Hartman.

The tow-truck driver identified the SUV driver, who went to the hospital for “treatment of a possibly broken nose. He was charged with two counts of assault of a police officer, criminal mischief in the first degree, evading responsibility and disorderly conduct.” Police charged the woman with interfering.

No Thanks For The Tip:A man on Wayfarer Street ordered a pie delivery from Hamden’s pizza choice Friday night. A driver delivered the pizza. The man paid. The driver left. No problem.

A man called for another delivery to the same Wayfarer Street address in the West Rock neighborhood Saturday evening. The same driver headed over. As he pulled up, according to Officer Hartman, he “saw a man approaching as if he was there to pick up the pizza. He said another man joined the first. he pointed a ‘long black gun’ at him. The robbers told him not to move and to hand over everything he had. The unarmed man grabbed the pizza, cash from his pocket and a bottle of soda. He and the gunman”—who wore a face mask—“ran off.”

The cops knocked on the door of the Wayfarer Street address. The man answering the door didn’t know anything about a pizza delivery. He hadn’t ordered a pizza, he said. And indeed, his phone was not the one from which the pie had been ordered.